Tag Archive for: eBay

Why do eBay Sales Stay Consistent?

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For new or smaller businesses, this entire article is going to fly straight over your head, however for larger businesses and for me personally, its a question that has been bothering me for quite some time now. Months apparently.

That question is:

Why do sales through a specific sales channel, tend to stay consistent?

In this article I address this question and it wasn’t until I asked for help, that the real answers came through. It’s also raised further questions, such as how do you deal with this, what options do you have and how can you tackle this with your business model. I actually feel I am now left with more taxing questions than I originally started with.

This really is the upper extremity that I am considering here, if your business is new or is not optimised using any of the 3 rules I cover in a moment, then you should not even concern yourself with this article at all. However, if you’re hitting “limits” on different sales channels, then you really need to read this.

Why this Question?

For a number of years now, I’ve seen merchants selling on multiple platforms hitting a limit of what can be done with a marketplace. For example, businesses that are in a specific niche, their sales will rarely go above or below a 20% window on a daily basis.

There may be “spikes” in sales on a daily basis and seasonality does have a positive effect on most businesses. But overall, most businesses stay consistent.

To understand why I’d be asking myself this question in the first place, I have been working on a set of 3 rules as the basis of expansion/profitability, they also spell “ESI” or are pronounced as “easy!”, which is the ultimate goal of where I am going with these and there is a fourth part that I discuss later in this article. Anyway, the for now these three rules are:

  1. Efficiency
    Both internal & external. Internal is everything your customer does not see, like tools, processes etc… and external is everything your customer does see, branding, the application of persona’s etc..
  2. Sales Channels
    By adding more of them or refocusing on a specific channel to “catch up” with others or to break into a new or refocus upon a competitive advantage.
  3. Inventory
    Either wider or deeper inventory. Range selling, new product verticals (widening the current range) or deeper inventory (thus better price points & supplier relationships)

However, it’s common for a merchant to hit a “limit” on a specific marketplace like eBay or Amazon and I was not happy that “operational efficiencies” were the cause. I know first-hand after spending a few months helping one specific company on-the-ground overcome these and was not happy with the standard reply to such a question. There had to be another reason.

Another aspect has concerned me greatly; what if a client I am working with is actually at 95% efficiency of a channel, what really are the options and what can I do to help them overcome this inherent boundary?

Asking for Help

There was only one person that I knew that could possibly hold the answer or even comprehend what I was referring to in the question. This person was perfect for a number of reasons, the first that he has been in this arena longer than I have, seen more merchants than myself on the differing marketplaces and critically seen the sales data to back this up. That person was Marshall Smith from ChannelAdvisor.

Here is the first email, that I sent over to Marshall. Noting that I have been bothered by this for months. In a conversation on Monday of this week, it was pointed out I had been asking the participant the same question in January.

Hi Marshall,

Here is a question, that I think only you can answer.

Its a question that has been bothering me for quite some time, “Why do eBay sellers sales stay consistent?”

To be more precise, I have noticed that specific sellers sales, never move out of say a 20% window, for example seller X has a average sales of £10,000, the daily fluctuations mean that their sales will never (or rarely do) move outside of 2K below and 2K above.

Surely there are too many factors for a business to consistently land in the same “window” of sales every single day. I understand why this maybe engineered to happen, but that raises more questions that it answers as the most obvious one is “how to you break or work this limitation?”

Have you seen this also?

The first reply is below, it clearly shows that Marshall understands the common issues that occur and why I was right to ask him in the first place.

Matthew –

When I see that situation it’s the same as a regular retail business that’s hit a certain volume and ceiling in their current business practices, so that growth is just not an option for them as they’re trying to run things. They might have a software solution that’s put a ceiling on how much they can get done because it’s not as efficient as they need and a lot of time is spent managing the technology.

They might be short on people (or have chosen to stay at a certain size) and they’re doing all they can every day so there’s no room to grow. Even more common is that people get comfortable and aren’t looking for a change – look at all of the people that have complained about eBay’s changes in the last few years rather than embracing them and recognizing that being ahead of the curve means they’ll pick up the business their competitors lose. There have been plenty that are willing to do that, but even more that had gotten comfortable and just want to keep doing what they’ve always been doing.

One of the things that I’ve found hardest over the years when trying to explain the value that we provide to users is getting them to value their own time. Many times there’s a sole proprietorship that’s been running things using something like Turbo Lister and spending hours and hours every day just to manage their sales. They see it as “free” but aren’t accounting for how much time it costs them to manage that information. Even if they just stay on eBay, coming over to us is going to save them time that they can use to grow their business or go do some other leisure activity instead.

If we just cut the amount of work they’re doing from 6 hours to 3 hours every day (and we’re usually a lot better than that) then we’ve saved them 60-90 hours every month. For that fee that we charge, broken out on a per-hour basis, they’d be hard pressed to get someone that could handle that amount of information and that level of capability to guarantee their business keeps running the same as it’s always been for that amount.

They free up their time to expand their business or focus on customer service, areas that usually didn’t get handled nearly as well before. Yet, they see it as a “cost” because they weren’t calculating the value of their time that they were spending inefficiently to run the business before.

So many of those people have gotten trapped in a pattern where they have something that’s working that they don’t want to change because they fear change or don’t think they have any cash to invest into the business. Most of the time those types of sellers never even get to the level that we’re going to be dealing with them as they fall out of the sales cycle for one reason or another.

If they’re a serious business and want to grow then there are things we can do for them, but if they haven’t figured out the business cycle and a mid to long range plan to grow then we’re going to be big and scary to them.

We’ve had people tell us we made changes to their business that took 8-10 hours of daily work down to just 1 hour a day. Then they finally had the opportunity to grow their business, source more product, expand product lines, hire more employees, and finally get growth back into their business.

Marshall

Note: I understand that the above is quite a lot for most of you to take in, what this question did in short was highlight that Marshall was the right person to ask. We both [Marshal & I] had reservations that some of you may just not “get this” at all. If this is the case, then the rest of this article is probably a waste of your time.

Redefining the Question

Ignoring that Marshall has created a dozen articles worth in that reply alone, lost about 90% of the people that may read this [Stay! This really does hit gold shortly], it clearly showed that he was the right person to ask.

However I needed to redefine it, we had missed the goal I was looking for. And trust me, we hit it the jackpot in his reply to the following:

Howdy Marshall,

Ah it shows that you understand!

Now remove the users and the software as variables or imagine they’re 90% efficiency.

Why do their sales stay within a 20% window all the time? No major fluctuations, yea some days less, some days more, but never outside of their “boundary”.

Take Amazon sellers, they get the buy box, the sales flood in, its price dependant for sales volume (ignoring lots of other stuff), eBay its different, there is some form of cap or barrier in place??

Jackpot

Now this is where we hit the jackpot and I strongly suggest you read this at least twice as it’s that important:

There’s no buy box in the eBay experience, so you’re subject to the whims of what people are buying at any given point. At a very macro economic level, the demand for most items is pretty consistent and follows a standard pattern.

People replace their shoes on a certain cycle. At a macro version of the economy, there are always X% of people that are shopping for shoes. That keeps the demand at a pretty consistent stream. Then when there’s not something adjusting the demand direction like the Buy Box, then the sellers are exposed at about the same rate that they always are, causing the sales to be within a reasonable statistical level of average.

To parallel to another environment, think of the casino – any individual user might win or lose on the smaller scale, but at the big picture of all of the people playing all of the games the house knows what their rate is going to be and how much they’re going to make as a percentage of the overall bets. That house advantage is the macro version you’re seeing among these sellers where the growth pattern is to:

* improve their placement in the exposure to capture a larger proportion of the regular buyers (Buy Box)
* expand their product line to make the universe of potential buyers for them to be a larger group
* expand the distribution channels to open up the existing product to a larger overall audience

Since you can’t (really) get the Buy Box on eBay (eTRS and Best Match only goes so far) then really the only way to grow is to expand the product line or do additional stuff off-eBay.

A lot of people get comfortable with their products and what they know of eBay, so they don’t change any of these things and grow up to the point that they’ve captured “their share” and then are stagnant from that point forward.

That was okay in the past when eBay was growing at such a clip that people were seeing 20-30% annual increases because they were just riding on the coattails of eBay growth, but when that slowed down they weren’t ready and just got frustrated and confused.

When they pay attention to the types of things we both talk about, that’s when they’re able to address one or more of these points and expand their business again instead of being stuck on a plateau.

Marshall

Kipper Slap

What Marshall had highlighted were the following:

  1. There is a pretty much consistent demand for some product ranges, like shoes.
  2. With all factors being equal, sellers are exposed to buyers at a consistent rate
  3. There is only so-much you can do in a single marketplace
  4. There is only so-much you can do with a specific product range
  5. If you just tread-water, then you’re not going to see the high increases that you used to see, as eBay’s growth rate has slowed down

You cannot imagine the gravity of these 5 points were to me. I had been pondering over this for several months and in this one reply, which was comparable to being hit in the face with a kipper. It all became clear. It’s also raised bucket loads of other questions, but it was finally answered.

What Does this Now Mean?

In short, as Marshall puts it so aptly, “You can no longer ride the coattails of eBay for growth”. This also extends to every other marketplace there is as well. There is an inherent cap to the number of people looking for a specific product on a specific day on a specific marketplace.

Yes, globally this number may be a huge, however on a macro level each and every marketplace, the number of customers you can reach and convert is limited.

The E, the S, the I and the?

In the 3 rules of ESI, I give equal value to each of rules, that is, that efficiency carries a weighting of one, the same as sales channels and inventory. However within each of these, the weighting is not equal and it’s the combination of them that equate to something higher than just 3.

However, if just one is exceptionally poorer than the rest, then that heavily out weighs the others. In simple terms (I like to use metaphors, get used to them, there are more) its like a Ferrari with elephant as a passenger and coal as the fuel, you got some of the right gear, but you ain’t going anywhere.

If you’ve got a great listing template and no inventory, if you’ve got a world class backend system, but no sales channels, if you’ve got masses of inventory and a limited backend tool and only a single marketplace. You’re not going to get very far and there is no way you’ll ever hit the boundaries that we’ve been discussing in this article.

This is why its absolutely critical to your business that you pick the right tools for the job, because without them you’re not going very far and with them all in harmony, you’ll outpace “The Stig“.

I hinted earlier that I am working on a fourth part to the ESI structure, this is one is special, because this one is a multiplier. While the others cumulatively have a positive effect, this one is ultra special because with this one executed currently multiplies the gains of the first three.

The multiplier is “Why”. Why are you doing what you are doing and what guides you to what you are doing. A business with no drive is pretty much only ever going to tread water, however, if you lob in the magic of a say a CEO like Steve Jobs that will ensure that a company will succeed huge personal cost, then this is a multiplier.

My equation (again I am trying to keep this as a simple as possible) looks like this:

Results = (Efficiency +  Sales Channels + Inventory) x The “Why” Factor

As you can see, even if the sum of the E, S & I are low, if you say have someone or a purpose to add in a “Why Factor” then all these are multiplied and that is why I believe that most small businesses that stick longer than a year, have this very special ingredient.

Determination and grit are absolutely required and its these kind of factors that multiply the results. I am reminded over a conversation in a meeting a few months back, where it was blatantly obvious that my role in the conversation was to highlight that what they lacked for, did not matter. What did, was that they had the determination to make it happen, “The Why Factor” and I think you might have already guessed it, they are winning.

Conclusion

A stark summary of this entire article, is that there is a limit to what you can do on a single marketplace.

The inherent cap, does not impact all business models, if you’re business is subject to multiple customer bases (eg. B2C & B2B) and/or irregular stock levels, then this cap is going to yo-yo and give inconsistent sales on a frequent basis, by its very nature. However if your business is homed-in on a specific niche then if you’re not at this wall yet, then you will be soon (or later).

I’d like to extend a public thank you you Marshall from ChannelAdvisor. It was not my intention to use his replies in this article, but as I started working on it over the course of over a week or so, it became apparent that without his replies, the story of arriving at the final answer, would fall far short without its inclusion. Thank you.

Image Source

This Weeks To-Do List

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I’m here writing out what my “to-do list” is for the week and thought I share parts of it with you.

Reading

I need to make a serious dent in a book I have been slowly reading over the past few weeks, its called “On Competition” by Michael Porter. I’m now only 75 or so pages in and what is covered is best described as ‘epic’. I’ve never looked at competitive advantages in such detail and finally understand the power of straddling and why the lust for growth can make compromises to a business.

I also just completed Freakonomics over the weekend and have ordered the following book, Superfreakonomics which should be here Tuesday, along with a book I took from Scot Wingo’s reading list called Founders at Work. I have previously read ‘Rework‘ by the chaps at 37signals.

Accountant

VAT registration is on the cards again and a special thanks to Chris from Tamebay on some pointers earlier today. I have a meeting with the accountant on Thursday. I’m also quite excited about this as there is the potential to bring her in on some of the topics that I have to cover as part of ProjectE.

Social Networking

I’m going to flip my usage of social mediums this week, one change I made a week or so ago was to keep the spam down on my personal accounts, for example, not posting updates from here to my FaceBook account. I’m going to take this a stage further and keep as many of the interactions as possible incoming, rather than outgoing, if that makes sense?

Podcasting

You might start to see a new side to this site later this week. I have been toying with the idea of releasing podcasts for quite sometime now, they’re part of the road-map for this site and you might just see this come to fruition this week (but no promises).

ChannelAdvisors Amazon 360

One of the largest strengths of ChannelAdvisor is their ability to create reports that make sense and part of their changes due out soon is something called “Amazon 360”, the Autumn press release is here and I’m hoping on seeing this before it goes live in two weeks time.

Two Key Articles

I’ve got two key articles I have been working on, the first is a critical observation from the eSellerPro council and the other is regarding the limitations on eBay and well marketplaces in general and it’s already raising more questions than it answers. Both are pending authorisation by 3rd parties, so you are may or may not see these this week.

Other Tasks

I’ve still got 4 tasks from last week to complete, none of them were simple either.

The ongoing commitments to ProjectE and the ProjectE 6 are taking up my entire Friday. They’re half way through right now and its too early to comment on their progress, other than we’re at the stages that I expected. We had an exceptionally interesting conversation on Friday regarding pricing strategies I can tell you!

How does this compare to your to-do list?

Webinar with ChannelGrabber Today @ 17:00

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In case you’ve missed it, I’m holding another Free Webinar this evening at 17:00 GMT with MD of ChannelGrabber.com, Daniel and one of their users, Jason who is also one of the ProjectE 6.

Who Should Attend?

If you’ve never used an “automation tool” to manage the differing sales channels eBay & Amazon, then this webinar is for you.

There are typically three spikes in an online small/medium business, the first spike is when you start selling in the first place and dedicate time, the second is when you add more sales channels and the third is when you use a tool like ChannelGrabber to automate as much as possible and to refocus on better inventory data and more inventory.

These are my three rules to expansion, efficiency (internal & external), more sales channels, more inventory. A tool such as ChannelGrabber underpins ALL of these.

What are We Covering?

The webinar will be broken into two sections, the first will be hosted by Daniel and he’ll explain why a tool like this existed and how it can help you.

The second part will with Jason, an actual user of ChannelGrabber and you’ll hear “a real customer” that uses this for his business

Why Not Wednesday?

I’m off to a “customer council” with eSellerPro tomorrow and don’t fancy trying to host the Webinar from hotel wifi.

Where Do I Register?

You can register here http://lastdropofink.co.uk/workshop and it starts at 5pm tonight.

See you there!

7 Leathal eBay Listing Mistakes (Including Borat)

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I’ve put together some of the most lethal eBay listing mistakes, I’m sure you’ll not use any of these, just in case, here are some of the things to avoid!

No Gallery Picture

No Gallery Picture

No Gallery Picture

Have you seen how many items are in the clothes, shoes & accessories category lately? On checking there is approximately 13 million listings. Fashion items are the most visual items of them all and not including a gallery picture, which is free I hasten to add, will pretty much kill any chances you have of getting a buyer (or anyone for that matter) to view your listing.

One Word Titles

No eBay Title

One word eBay title

We’ve now got space for 80 characters from the previous 55 this month. There are extremes of keyword abuse, however this one falls rather short.

SCREAM AT YOUR BUYERS

eBay Caps Lock

SHOUTING at your buyers doesn’t help.

BY TYPING IN CAPS LOCK IT MAKES READING STUFF REALLY HARD. DON’T DO IT! (pretty please).

Poor Images

ebay-poor-images-1

One hours free consulting if you guess right what this is.

You can get mobile phones with 12Mp cameras on them now (probably more!), there is no excuse for not including great images on your listings.

Using Borat to Sell Your Wares

ebay-borat-1

Say NO to Borat

Look, I cried with laughter at that film, but skimpy birthday suits to sell your wares, naaaa.

L@@K This!

ebay-keyword-boredom

L@@K This!

If you cannot think of any more constructive keywords to put in the title, stop!

Get your Pricing Right

ebay-pricing-1

Pricing gone AWOL?

Yep that’s a seven million pound book. I’d not want to be paying the 9% fees on that!
(£617,282.88 to be precise, ignoring any discounts)

Summary

The above are a bit of fun, I found all these on Sunday evening within a few minutes.

On a serious note though, great eBay listing’s are a combination of the lots of little things done right, great titles, superb images, informative descriptions and so on, not a Borat-look-a-like in his skimpys.

Stop - Take Action!What could you do today?
What tiny tweaks could you make today, to make your listings better?
Need ideas? See an earlier guide I wrote for SEO for eBay 10 minutes per day.

Tuesday (Not Weds) Workshop With ChannelGrabber!

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Register NowI’m really excited to be able to announce that on Tuesday 13th September, I’ll be holding the next Webinar & have roped in two fantastic people to join me.

Here is your personal invitation and you can register here.

Guest Speakers

The first is Daniel Williams, Managing Director of ChannelGrabber and we’ll be delving deeper into why this product was created, how it helps businesses who sell on-line and what it can do for you.

The second is Jason. Jason is one of the 6 businesses that I’m working with as part of the ProjectE. You’ll be able to hear directly from one of the ChannelGrabber users, why he uses it, how it’s impacted his businesses and how it’s enabled him to work on his business and not purely in his business.

Why am I Excited?

I half-mention this in the video above, to be able to do “Multi Channel” effectively, then you need a tool in the background to support you & to apply processes, so that you can work more efficiently in and on your business. ChannelGrabber makes this task very easy and is exceptionally affordable.

Why Tuesday & Not Wednesday?

eSellerPro are holding a “customer council” that I have been graciously invited to on Wednesday and are attending the public “customer conference” event on Thursday. If you’ve missed this, then you can see the full article for the eSellerPro at Lords here.

BTW if you’re attending, look out for the bold bloke wearing purple & come say “hi!”.

When & Where

Register NowThis workshop is on Tuesday 13th September at 5pm UK Time. There are only 100 places and on the first workshop there were 81 attendees, register now before all the places are taken!

Previously Registered?

If you’ve already registered for the “Wednesday Workshops” from two weeks ago, it’s the same registration details. No need to re-register and you’ll be sent an email automatically just before the event on Tuesday. (Thanks Andre for pointing this out to me!)

House Keeping

Please arrive early, it will take a few moments to download the free GoToWebinar application and if you can arrive a few minutes before hand, you won’t miss the start of the meeting.

Stop - Take Action!Register now, only 100 places!
The first workshop there were 81 participants, the application only supports 100 and I’d hate for you to miss out.  You can register here.

When People Buy from You, They Make a Commitment

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Getting Married to your buyers

Buyers make a commitment to you, do you make a commitment back?

Lets think about this for a few moments as its sometimes just glazed over, its very easy to do so, with suppliers calling, all those emails to answer and packages to pack, not to mention the kids are going to need picking up later. But are we missing what a epic journey your customer has just been on?

Unless you’re selling “consumable goods” like bread & milk, the buyer that just purchased from you, has probably been through quite an ordeal to make that purchase.

Not a one click & forget

eBay isn’t a one-click purchase, Amazon can be, I used it once, but still prefer to “checkout” to ensure the details are correct. Its even worse on most websites, with no uniform checkout process. They [the customer] has had to work to make the purchase from you and even then they still have doubts.

What have they been through so far?

So with the buyer in mind, lets flip-ourselves into their shoe, to see what they’ve completed to actually buy the item from you.

  1. They found the item you sell
    Probably amongst hundreds of others. Quite a feat.
  2. They probably bookmarked the item, or added it to their watch list
    This is especially true for “considered purchases”, typically items over £40-50
  3. They’re happy with “you”
    They checked your feedback and read the negs & neuts and are still happy
  4. They’re happy with the description
    After scouring the other products, they’ve decided that this item is “right for them”
  5. They’ve envisaged using the product
    Think fashion or a drain rod set. One’s going to solve an emotional need to look great, the other, well…
  6. They’ve jumped hoops to pay for the item
    Is the eBay checkout really that straight forward? Is the Amazon checkout that straight forward either? Logging in, signing into PayPal, these are all barriers that the customer has just been through and could have tripped up at any one of them.
  7. They’ve handed over their money in good-will
    The irony is that for both eBay & Amazon, they have paid you in “good will” before even having the goods. If you were in Tesco shopping, while you may not be able to open up the bread and take a bite (unless you have kids and they’ll do it anyway), you can still interact with it, check its consistency and “personally inspect it”.
  8. They still have doubts
    Even though they’ve been through all the barriers above, they still have doubts. Is the item right? What if its damaged? Will it turn up? Will I be in to collect it? Did they get the mooney? Did I screw something up in the checkout process? Pants, was that my old address or my new address I used?

Summary

Its like getting married (an experience I’m looking forward to next year), one party is making an epic commitment to you, what are you giving back in return?

Its easy to get consumed with the day-to-day actives and forget that your buyers have been through an epic ordeal to buy the goods or services from you.

Stop - Take Action!What are YOU going to do?
What can you do to make the buyers tasks easier? What can you do right now to over-come barriers or quash doubts?

Image source: Adamjonfuller

Preparing for the Increased eBay Titles Before September Using eSellerPro

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If you’ve been shelled up for the past few weeks, eBay are increasing the eBay listing title character limit from 55 characters to 80 in September. The eBay update around this (and some other updates too) is here http://sellerupdate.ebay.co.uk/august2011/space-write-better-item-titles.html

In this article I’m going to be covering how you can prepare for the updated character length in eSellerPro, however the same concept ports to other 3rd party tools also and if you’re not using any of these, then the excel part will work just as well, using eBay File Exchange.

To update or not to update

The biggest question here is should you or should you not update active listings that have sales on them. This is a nasty question because either way you’re going to loose out. I’ll explain.

eBay are not removing the lock on the revision of eBay listing titles for this update, this means that if your listings have sales on them you have two choices:

  1. Leave them alone, with the reduced 55 character title, but keep the sale counts visible on the listing
  2. End the listing and re-list it with the extended title

Now there is a third and this is the one you need to avoid. Do not end your listing and NOT relist it using the old listing number, if you do this you will loose ALL your best match history.

Now most 3rd party applications keep (or should keep, ask them explicitly) a listing history and when you end and relist a product/service, it should in the API call to eBay, reference the previous eBay listing number. By doing this, best match is carried across to the new listing.

If you are using eSellerPro, this is something I worked on and I can categorically state that if you end a listing and re-list it, eSellerPro WILL carry the best match over, because it keeps the history (in the listing history tab) and will reference the previous listing (infact, we got clever with this and if there is not the same type of listing available, eg a BIN, it will pick the next best option (handy when you’ve mapped listed items that came from another tool)).

The answer

Now to answer the tricky question, which was do you end them and relist them and my straight answer to this is yes, you should.

My reasoning behind this is as follows:

  1. If you using the above tools, or even manually, if you relist using the previous eBay listing number, then the best match sales history will be carried over.
  2. Your competitors are going to be doing this also, the faster you do this, the less time that is lost between now and Christmas
  3. You’re receiving 25 extra characters to use in the titles, this will help you narrow (yes narrow, not widen) the people that view the listing, ultimately resulting in more targeted views.

How to prepare for the increased titles.

This is actually going to be a really simple job in eSellerPro. Just follow these simple steps.

Part 1, make the custom field to enter the new title into

  1. Go to Maintenance and select the custom fields icon (looks like an excel icon)
  2. Press the new record icon to create a new group
  3. Name the group “eBay Titles”
  4. Make sure the group type is “Product”
  5. Add a new custom field as an edit box with both names set as “New eBay Title”
  6. Add another custom field called “Old eBay Title”

We now have two custom fields, one for the current (soon to be old) eBay listing title and another to place the new listing title in.

Part 2, Create a custom layout

  1.  Go to Maintenance and scroll down to Export/Import layouts (its a yellow funnel)
  2. Press the new record icon
  3. For “Layout Name” enter “eBay Listing Titles”
  4. Set the delimiter drop down to ‘comma (44)’
  5. On the right under “Standard Fields”, scroll to “StockNumber” and press the button to the right (its call Add item or something, I’m writing this from memory so cannot be 100%)
  6. Then from the same drop down box scroll to “Listing Title” and hit the add button again
  7. Now we need to add the two custom fields, in the box below this one there is another wide drop down box, click on it and scroll down to the ones that read something like “eBay Titles/New eBay Title” and add them both, with the new one first.
  8. Now go back to the first drop down under “Standard Field” and near the top of the list, select <Unused> and add this to the layout also. (I’ll explain why in the next section).
  9. Press save at the top

You should now have a layout that has fields in this order:

  • StockNumber
  • ListingTitle
  • New eBay Title
  • Old eBay Title
  • <Unused>

Part 3, Preparing data

What we’ve done is create a layout which we can use to import and export the titles at will and only update the fields we want to work with.

Now go to Inventory and make a search for some inventory records, once the results have returned, hit the select all button in the bottom left to select them all (or just select a few if you want to test this first). Along the top there is an excel icon, click it.

Note: If you had the inventory tab open while making the template, close and reopen the section as I’m not 100% sure of the layouts are dynamically updated or not. This will be obvious when you go to export and the layout name “eBay Listing Titles” is missing.

A new window appears and along the top you want to select the “custom export layout” tab (again I’m writing this from memory and it may be worded slightly differently).

In the bottom left is the drop down box for the custom export/import layouts, select the layout we just made called “eBay Listing Titles” and press the export button. Set an apt file name save it to the desktop. You’ll also be given a file type to export as, select “CSV” as this option. Now open the file.

You will now have a spreadsheet that looks like this:

Excel Layout

Now copy the contents of column B, to column D, so we now have a backup of the original eBay listing title.

Critical note:

DO NOT EDIT COLUMN B

If you edit column B and import the changes you’ll bork your titles and the whole world will cave in. Seriously though, wait on this until later in this article. But for now DO NOT EDIT this column at all. Clear?

Click into cell E2 and put in this formula:

=IF(LEN(C2)>80,”Over 80 chars. Length: “&LEN(C2),””)&IF(LEN(C2)<77,”Under 77 Chars. Length: “&LEN(C2) & ” You can use ” & 80-LEN(C2) & ” more”,””)

And press enter. Now grab the right corner of the cell and drag it down (or double-click it if you have loads) to the bottom of the records you have.

Your sheet will now look a lot better than my example:

esp-titles-layout-2

Now you can work on the new titles in column C and column E will tell you if your title is over 80 chars and if its under 77 chars (77 is a OK, that leaves 3 or so over for an acceptable tolerance).

Using my example, I have now have this:

esp-titles-layout-3

As you can see, the first title is just about right, the second is too long and the last one is too short.

Part 4, Saving the files

It is now critical that you pay attention to the next few lines, this is where you’re likely to make a mistake.

  1. Save this file as a Excel Spreadsheet, NOT a CSV sheet.
  2. Work on all the titles so that column E shows no (acceptable) errors.

Once complete, save again in the Excel format.

Now before importing back into eSellerPro, save the sheet as a CSV sheet (Comma Delimited). I’ve included a screen shot as its really important that you save the working sheet as an excel workbook and the sheet you import into eSellerPro as a CSV sheet.

This is the option you select to save as a CSV file:

esp-titles-layout-4

You will now have two files:

  1. The excel file that has the fomulas in and is your master sheet
  2. The CSV sheet which we’ll use next for importing back into eSellerPro

Part 5, Importing back into eSellerPro

We now need to upload these titles, so that we can use them when eSellerPro and eBay update the title char length.

  1. Go to inventory and select the excel icon at the top, this time, select tab that’s (roughly) called “Import custom layout”.
  2. Along the bottom of this window is a upload button, hit it and upload the CSV file (not the .xls or .xlsx file). This will take a few moments.
  3. Once uploaded it will appear in the top left hand corner of the window you have open. If the file was called “eSellerPro 80 Chars Example CSV.csv”, it’ll show as “eSellerPro 80 Chars Example CSV”.
  4. Click and highlight this file.
  5. In the bottom left, select the layout called “eBay Listing Titles”
  6. Press import
  7. Another window will pop up, make sure you check the box called something like “Actually import the data”, its the only check box on this screen, tick it.
  8. Now press OK

You’ve now imported the updated titles into eSellerPro and are keeping them safe in a custom field and you have a backup of the original eBay listing title.

Part 6, When the time comes…

When eSellerPro updates the title field to accept 80 chars, not 55 and eBay release the extended titles in their API** your job is super easy.

This is because you’ve already worked on all your titles between now and and the update, date and for you, its a simple case of copy/pasting the contents from column C (the “New eBay Title”) to column B (the “ListingTitle”) and importing them in as a CSV sheet in Part 5 as we covered above.

** Please note here that its not uncommon for the eBay API to lag a few days behind on updates and why the SYI form may allow you to enter 80 chars in September, 3rd parties like eSellerPro may be limited by the API not allow it just yet.

Summary

To help you, I’ve uploaded the example file used in this article here.

In the steps above I’ve focused on eSellerPro, however the principle of importing, editing and the re-importing when the time comes will work for pretty much all 3rd party tools such as ChannelAdvisor, Linnworks and so on…

The hardest part of the above is actually updating the titles themselves as I suspect you may have a few thousand (or more). Using this method you can work on them between now and the date this update is released by eBay and be fully prepared.

I have neglected until now to state the obvious, which is that you’ll need to revise your live listings (when the time comes). The ones that fail the revision on the eBay title field, will need to be ended (assuming you only list GTC listings) and also assuming you are using the Channel Profile to list on eBay, the listings will go back up automatically.

If you are not clear on any of the stages above, the unpaid support I can offer you here is limited, you’re better off either talking to eSellerPro support or if you have complex requirements, such as the concatenation of data to use other fields to make best use of the extra fields, use the contact form to reach me along the top of this website.

If you’ve found this article useful, let me know by posting a comment below or if you have a topic you’d like me to cover, again pop it in the comments box.

eSellerPro At Lords in September

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eSellerProIn case you’ve missed it, eSellerPro are holding their first public customer conference at Lords on the 15th September. The line up includes the usual suspects, eBay, PayPal and lunch. However MoneyBookers, Profulfillment & Priceminister have presentations in the afternoon, which is a first as I’m aware for an event such as this.

The two key parts I’m looking forward to are release of the product roadmap from Eamonn Costello, the new product development director & also the “heads up” from the CEO,  Keith Bird.

A tour of Lords is also included and the agenda is below:

9:30 Registration
10:00 Welcome, eSellerPro, Vision and Strategy, Keith Bird, CEO, eSellerPro
10:30 Product Roadmap – Eamonn Costello, Director of Product Development, eSellerPro
11:00 Paypal
11:30 Break
11:45 eSellerPro Customer Case Study – Towequip
12:15 eBay
12:45 Amazon
13:15 Lunch
How can you grow your Business Internationally
13:45 MoneyBookers
14:00 Profulfillment
14:15 Priceminister
14:30 Panel Q&A and Close
15:00 eSellerPro Surgery, Meet the Team and network with our partners
SellerPro Surgery, Networking and Tour of Lords

You can register here and the full details are here. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Your Invitation to an Unique Opportunity for 5 eCommerce Businesses for ProjectE

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Last Friday, I announced that I would be offering “A Unique Opportunity for 5 eCommerce Businesses for ProjectE” (see the link for the video), today I’m providing more information around this huge opportunity for the selected 5 businesses and opening to doors to applications.

What actions you take now, can have a massive impact on the busiest season of the year, Christmas. This really is a unique opportunity for you & your business, as I am essentially offering my experiences & services for free at a critical time of the year.

I’ve had quite a few emails already asking questions already, most questions are answered below, the common one was “What do I have to do to ensure I’m part of this Matt?”, one sent me this:

(Yes, I know it’s shameless, but if you could email Camelot and ask them if they would suggest which lottery numbers might be good to pick I bet you would).

As I mention below in this article and in the video, I have no real preference on the businesses size, just that the 5 chosen will be in non competing areas and have a willingness to learn and put the time in as needed. If I’ve worked with you before, that’s also OK. I’ve put the invitation as openly and as honestly as I can in the video below.

Why am I offering this opportunity?

There are two core reasons, the first is commitment. I’ve been hovering around ProjectE for some time now and I need personal commitment to its success, this is my way of ensuring that it happens and does not remain a ‘pipe dream’. The second is being able to understand & document exactly the right information to help other businesses grow through ProjectE.

Who am I?

If this your first time to this site, then I strongly urge you to read the rest of this site. This is my personal blog and I’ve covered quite a wide range of eCommerce related topics.

As a very brief introduction, I’ve ran my own eBay based business for three years, held the very first eBay PowerSeller meeting, worked with an auction management company called Marketworks (which was later bought by ChannelAdvisor) for 18 months and then spent three years at eSellerPro, a multi-channel software provider. I work with one of the most successful unbranded fashion multi-channel companies & launched Tesco on eBay a year or so ago. I have two “daddys” girls, I’m getting married next year, I have an unnatural love of Fridays and I’m addicted to coffee.

Non Competing Businesses

A critical part is my intention to pick five businesses that do not compete in the same product groups/verticals.

By picking businesses where they do not compete directly with each other, I’ve found from personal experience, breaks down the immediate boundaries that competition puts up and opens the opportunity of working together, so that 6 people in a non-competing environment can work more effectively, than just one.

A core part of these 8 weeks will be working together with myself and the four other selected businesses to amplify the experience. I’m suspecting that the latter, being able to talk to liked minded individuals who face similar issues will ultimately be most benefit to you.

What would be my personal concerns if I was a business considering taking part?

I felt it important to include this section, as it would be one of my primary concerns in taking part in this opportunity.

I’d like to stress that data to me is just that, data. I’ve seen sooo many addresses, inventory records, to just glaze over them. A customer’s address is just that, a couple of data fields, its contents are completely irrelevant and what is important is that the data is valid and in the correct format (and if not, why not).

I categorically have no intention of using any supplier based information to start my own “physical product based” business, I’ve been there and done that and will happily sign an NDA on supplier based information, that terminates for the period for up to 12 months after the project ends.

What is the “ideal” business type?

Your business should be eCommerce related and are using or intend to use eBay or Amazon as sales channels.

If you’re only taking a few hundred pounds per week or several hundred thousand turnover, this does not matter. What critically matters is that you’re able to work with others in a separate business area, are willing to learn fast and can commit the time needed for both the individual meetings, the group ones and the work that stems from them both.

What do I receive in return?

Ironically, I need your help as much as you need mine. ProjectE, which I’m looking forward to discussing with you, is about helping as many people as possible with their eCommerce businesses.

  • Permission to write about the experiences gained through the 8 week program
  • Use the knowledge & experience gained so that I can then help tailor future articles to help small & medium sized business.
  • Feedback on ProjectE

What is included?

The following is included & payment for the following is not implied nor expected.

  • Unique access to ProjectE
  • 1 hour per week dedicated support, via Skype or phone, focused to you & your business (will be on Weds, Thurs or Friday)
  • 1 hour per week group session to share your experience with the other members of the team (will be on Weds, Thurs or Friday)
  • Unlimited community forum & direct email support as required outside of the above
  • A ½ day site visit if you’re in a 30 mile radius of Bristol, United Kingdom (subject to lunch and coffee being provided)
  • [Pending confirmation] Access to two other experts, one of which will travel almost anywhere in the UK for the train fare, lunch and (uurrrh) tea.

What is required from you?

The most obvious inclusion here is commitment, I’m offering at least 16 hours or more of my time unpaid to help you, I expect this and a lot more in return.

  • An “open mind”
  • The purchase & completion of two or more books, within two weeks of the project starting (they’re about £15 in total on Amazon).
  • Attending individual & group meetings which will be held on a Weds, Thurs or Friday.

Questionnaire

To enter your businesses into this opportunity, I require a few simple questions to be answered. Please include a phone number that you can be reached on over the weekend of 20-21st August, as I’m intending to use this time to narrow down the entries.

The closing date for applications is Friday 19 August at 23:59.

All fields are required.

<< Sorry, this unique opportunity has now ended>>

A Unique Opportunity for 5 eCommerce Businesses for ProjectE

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Time to raise the stakes! On Monday 15th August, I’m going to open a public invitation for 5 businesses to work with myself for a period of 8 weeks, consisting of 1-2 hours mentoring & consulting for free.

The infamous “ProjectE” should be no surprise to you if you’ve read any part of this site or if I’ve worked with you before, its to be focused on eCommerce, with a hefty slant towards eBay & Amazon.

This is a huge & equally unique opportunity for you and your businesses, as I’m offering support, guidance and mentoring, at a critical part of the year. With Christmas with in easy reach, just imagine what you could achieve with the right guidance and actions on your part.

If you’re interested in working with me for free & for 2 whole months, watch this video now  as I’ve put together a brief overview for this unique opportunity and more details will follow on Monday.

I will be providing a submission form on Monday and the closing date for applications will be 17:00 Friday 19th August 2011.

Part 3 (Final): More Inventory – The 3 Ways to Increase Your Online Business

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This is the final part in the three part series on how to increase your on-line business. In the first part we covered the two sides of efficiency, internal efficiency and external efficiency and then in the second part (which I had to cut short due to time) we covered more sales channels.

Recap

I want to quickly recap on the sales channels section, these provide the largest spikes in turn-over for businesses. Even when done poorly, they can still offer the quickest returns on investments of time and money. Over time, both internal and external efficiency will kick in and make the new channel(s) more productive.

I didn’t really cover the the how and the where-to particularly well in part 2, I’ve got this noted to look at it again in more depth at a later date, as the article is compounded by the use of multiple tools for backend systems and I’d be looking at creating one larger article that covers the common ones.

Moving on…

To the final instalment, the title has already given the thunder away, its simply “More Inventory”.

“More Inventory” could mean a couple of different depending upon its application, it could mean the leveraging of ‘range selling’ so that you’re better able to tackle the exit strategy (for when the item being viewed is not the item desired) for listings on different sales channels or completely new products (or services) to be added to your business.

Range Selling

Staying with “Range selling” for a few moments, this simply means that you offer the majority of a range of products. As its raining here currently I’m thinking umbrellas. So imagine you have a couple of umbrellas that you sell quite frequently, also the supplier has 20 or so  other umbrellas, that you’ve just not ventured into as of yet. These are different colours and different sizes.

Instead of sticking with just the few that sell or you’ve found that sell in the past, take one of each and add them to your inventory (virtual stock is much better for this) . Now if you’ve not included them in a multi variation listing (best case) or via size/colour attributes on Amazon in a single record (again best case) you could add extra images & links to promote the other umbrellas in the listings themselves (on Amazon this is related products). The simplest way of look at this is as a buyer “Oh I don’t like this one I’m looking at, but I might like that one”.

Note: “Range selling” was introduced to me by a seller in the toys category several years back. I didn’t really get it at first, but once I started treating them as “ranges” and cross-promoting them as such, I would find that the entire range would do really well, rather than just a few more popular items. And often as the other items in the range did poorly for others, I was able to negotiate better pricing on the entire range of products.

Simple Fact. Product IS Product

It frequently surprises me when I explain this to clients and they get the “ah-ha” moment. It does not matter if you are selling an house or a pen, the selling process is essentially the same. You document the product, you market the product, the product sales, funds change hands, the product is delivered.

A Product
= An Umbrella
= A Computer Keyboard
= A House
= …

With this in mind, what is stopping you from expanding your current product range outside of the ‘safe boundaries’? Think about it, you probably already have access to hundreds if not thousands of extra products already within your supplier groups, its just a case of looking for them.

Once you’ve found one supplier, finding their competitor is relatively childs-play. But every supplier is different and with a little effort you can easily move around the supplier-food-chain. If you’re using backend tools as mentioned in the first article, the efficiency of adding more products is amplified both in the backend creation process (internal efficiency) and also in the steps you make towards greater external efficiency. These are both universal regardless of product type.

Note: I always pick a house as the opposite end of the extreme, it has its complexities, but its still a product…

<Insert negative here>

Frankly some people either don’t like this concept or just don’t get it. The former is because they “believe” you should be specialised and I agree, you should be specialised, specialised in making more money. You’re either growing or you’re dying. Pick one.

Conclusion

Through these three articles you should have a better idea on how you can increase your on-line business. From using tools to make both internal efficiency and external efficiency greater, to adding more sales channels (hint this is the second largest spike producer in turnover) and finally to adding more products, because they’re ALL essentially the same.

The 3 Ways to Increase Your Online Business Part 2: More Sales Channels

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Welcome to part 2 of a 3 part series that covers the three ways in which I consider the quickest and easiest ways of increasing your online business. If you missed the first part, this was on efficiency both internal efficiency, everything that happens inside the business and external efficiency, being more effective on your customer facing side of the business.

In this part, I’m going to be covering the thorny subject of ‘More Sales Channels‘. I say its ‘thorny’ because if not done well, then its going to have repercussions, however I feel its critically important that you diversify your risk and reach.

I did cover part of this in two previous  articles, the first called How To: Selling on eBay with more than one eBay ID and the second as the first caused quite a stir, called Part 2: Leveraging more than one eBay ID I’m going to be drawing from these two articles and explaining a little deeper on why you should consider duplicating (tactfully & gracefully) your current business.

Why more sales channels?

Lets get this out of the way first, as its the common question. As I mentioned yesterday the use of software tools such as  eSellerPro, ChannelAdvisor, Linnworks, 247TopSeller etc… force the business to use a set of processes, that are most likely far superior to what is being employed currently. This alone (after some hardwork & sweat learning these I hasten to add) will typically result in more turn over, as the business is some 5x times more efficient at the tedious, repetitive processes. Also the core users time is normally freed to focus on other important tasks, namely better descriptions, more stock, faster order processes and so on… resulting in more sales.

However… The critical point here outside of ‘efficiency’, is that the largest spikes in clients turnover is when they plugin another sales channel.

The simple sum here is:

More sales channels =  More Turnover

The Largest spikes

The largest and most immediate spikes happen when a business employs eBay or Amazon, when it was missing from their current sales channel mix

First lets imagine a solely Amazon based business that is not selling on their own website or eBay, as soon as you plugin these in, typically this is where you see the largest spikes in their companies turn over.

The same is true of the reverse, where a company may be solely eBay, when they add Amazon to the mix (because they can relatively easily as they are using one of the said tools) they’ve added another sales channel that responds quickly to their actions and thus, more turn over.

Certain software providers will use a clients growth as testament to that companies software product is the ‘better choice’; While this is partially true because such tools enable more efficient processes for unifying scattered business operations and like to shout about the growth companies experience when using the said tools, in reality they’ve just become more efficient and have added a major new sales channels into the mix. The real question is, what happens when you have done these steps?

Shoot me now

I’m going to go out on a limb here and actually say that when you’ve hit the natural growth points, ChannelAdvisor might be the better choice for you because of their dedicated “account management” structure & crucially experience.

While the other software products I’ve mentioned have such layers of varying degrees, when you’ve truly automated what you can, you’re stuck. The reliance for the business expansion goes back to the business owners & third party consultants like myself. If this is an area you know you’re going to struggle with, the extra fees could be a sound investment.

Note: For those who don’t know my history here, I spent over four years in direct competition with Channel Advisor in two SaaS products. If there is anyone that has the right to be anti-Channel Advisor, I’m them. Hey I even suggested I should throw their MD over the desk in an earlier article :)

I’m aware of changes that are occurring in another product and quite frankly I don’t like them, there is too much reliance on the product being the be-all-and-end-all. It gets you so far, but after that, you need that extra support.

And yes I am suggesting you could/should pay more for a software a product and saying you may not need my services (just yet), but that’s OK. You need to get as far as you can on your own.

I’ve already done this, what now?

If you have already implemented one of these software tools and have Amazon & eBay running well, then you are primed to expand.

What I mean by this is that you’ve gone through the learning curve of the software tool, you’ve got your data prepared for both of the key channels and probably have added on a website at the same time.

Sooo to recap you have:

  1. The majority of the steep learning curve completed
  2. Staff (hopefully) trained up on its use
  3. Processes in place to deal with over 10 times more orders
  4. Clean data that is just waiting to be “abused” to more channels
  5. More time to focus “on” the business, rather than working “in” the business

Note: If you have not got to this stage yet, then you should seriously consider using one of the software tools I mentioned as soon as humanly possible. The quicker you start using one of these, the quicker you reap the rewards of ‘efficiency‘.

Which leads nicely on to the next section.

The principles

Going back to the earlier article on selling on more than on eBay ID, we need a refresher on the underlying principles behind this and my views on these marketplaces.

For the vast majority of manufactured goods, you are not the only company selling them, thus every single day, customers choose your competitors over you. There are an infinite number of reasons for this, timing, colour scheme, layout, description, title are a few factors.

Which leads on to this pivotal statement:

So if you’re selling widgets, there are lots of other widget sellers for customers to choose from, so why not be one of the other widget sellers?

I included a simplified calculation on what this could mean in the article, a rough outline is that if you are 1 of three sellers for product X, with all things being equal**, you have a 1 in 3 chance of selling to the buyer, however, if you added an additional selling account so that there is now a 2 in four chance of selling to the buyer, you’ve not increased your odds of selling from 33% to 50% and I like the latter.

** None of the sales channels are equal, there are a large number of factors that influence each of them. However if you’re using a business model that works, then there is a fair chance you’ve got the majority right.

Also risk is an important factor to be considered, imagine that your sole channel ID gets a stream of negatives and you get left in the brown stuff, even with the eBay TRS protection for 3 months that’s kicking in, its going to be difficult to recover. By diversifying risk over multiple selling identities, you’re able to lower the overall risk to the business.

The other key point, is that if you’ve already created the inventory record once, then altering it to sell it again (but differently, see the important section on this in a few moments), then you’re 75% on the way to being able to add multiple identities.

Original Time To Create the Record
+  (Original Time To Create the Record / Number of ID’s + Time to make edits)
= Overall time to create inventory

From the calculation above, the largest amount of time is spent creating the first inventory record, as soon as you add duplicates, they are what they are, copies of the original and then needed to be altered with minor details for leveraging more channels.

What do I mean by “sales channels”?

Maybe I should have included this sooner, however to clarify, one eBay ID is a sales channel, one Amazon account is a sales channel, one website is a single sales channel etc…

Stop

(You can see where this is going)

Imagine you had to start your business again tomorrow, scary thought right?

Realising that you have already got 75% of the hardwork done, the learning curves for software, the processes in place, great, clean inventory thats being pushed out to your main sales channels, hey you may have even added a few channels while going through the set up processes, does duplicating your business onto additional sales channels sound that scary?

Potential new sales channels

While not exhaustive, here is a list of sales channels that you could leverage.

  1. eBay
  2. Amazon
  3. Website
  4. Comparison search
  5. Affiliates
  6. Retail shop
  7. Play.com
  8. PPC
  9. Social (this is a special one, covered later on)

Are you using all of these? Are you using all of these times 5? 10? 25? more?

My point is, as soon as you’ve completed the steps for one of these channels, duplicating it again is only a fraction of the work.

Early conclusion

I’m stopping here as I need to work on ProjectE related tasks today. I know I’ve not covered the ins-and-outs of this topic thoroughly and I’ll be revisiting this either here or with you when ProjectE goes public.

One topic that I have clearly avoided is how to to duplicate these sales channels, this is where the line kinda-goes-grey for many reasons, however the biggest one is that it directly competes with ProjectE.

However there are two points I feel is important to add. The first is that if you make a direct clone of your main eBay ID, then its unlikely to add any huge value to your customers, the channel and ultimately the business.

There are normally many “threads” (verticals is the correct term, you’ll probably understand ‘product ranges’ more easily) that can be followed to create the new ID with and the second is that duplicating Amazon should be given a wide birth for the reasons covered in the earlier article here. Everything else is fair game.